Is Shakespeare Poetry?
- readertim109
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Is Shakespeare Poetry?
What do you think of Shakespeare as a poet?
~ Dawn Adams ~
- LoveHatesYou
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- saracen77
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You generally have a line made up of 5 pairs of one week sound and one strong sound.
de-DAH, de-DAH, de-DAH, de DAH, de-DAH
but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS
At least, that's what I remember from my high school English classes! I may be a little rusty by now, and someone will probably be able to give you a more detailed description.
As someone said before, it is enormously difficult to sustain that kind of pattern for the length of a poem, let alone an entire play!
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lol funny how that's always the line used to describe iambic pentameter.saracen77 wrote:
de-DAH, de-DAH, de-DAH, de DAH, de-DAH
but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS
Personally I think Shakespeare plays are poetry - there's far more less poetic stuff out there that does get called poetry, that's for sure.
- knightss
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Sort of. Shakespeare often uses verse and prose to distinguish between classes. Royalty and noblemen, for example, will usually speak in "blank verse"-- unrhymed iambic pentameter, while lower class characters will speak in prose. (The exceptions to this rule are really fun to discuss). So actually, many of the long speeches are written in verse.knightss wrote:He maintains iambic pentameter throughout his plays, save the long speeches that are written in prose style.
As an answer to the original question: Shakespeare's plays are not poems, but they are poetry.
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- Dori
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- The iambic rhythm of this line* falls into five feet; hence it is called iambic pentameter. Iambic is the most common pattern in English poetry because its rhythm appears so naturally in English speech and writing. Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank verse; Shakespeare's plays are built on such lines.
*The line referred to is "I didn't want the boy to hit the dog."
What kept | his eyes | from giv | ing back | the gaze
Bold denotes a stressed syllable. The "|" are meant to separate what are called "feet." An example of a "foot," taken from the above line, would be "What kept," the next one being "his eyes." Iambs are comprised of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable (hence the bold).
Does this make any sense?
(Also: If you've ever read any of Robert Frost's poetry, it's composed in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter.)
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At least that's what i think. IIRC there's a nice passage in Stephen Fry's book The Ode Less Travelled where he explains the difference.
Though, certainly, many passages from Shakespeare's plays come close to poetry, with language being condensed and meaning multi-layered and what not. If we can have Browning's poems in forms of dramatic monologues, why not agree that Shakespeare's dramatic monlogues are basically poetry?
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